Ginger

When I first became depressed, it started with irritability. I started to get angry with my housemates for little reason. I couldn’t help myself. I would get annoyed about small things and I didn’t know why I’d changed so much. I apologised, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. I didn’t know myself why I got so angry, so it was difficult to explain it to someone else. I just always felt unhappy and irritable. One night, I lay in bed listening to a couple of my housemates whispering about my bad behaviour outside my door. I felt lousy and my already low self-esteem hit the floor.

Life at home became horrible. I started avoiding my housemates and they avoided me. I would come in from work and hide in my room until everyone had gone out or to bed and then go down to the kitchen to get something to eat. I felt increasingly lonely and isolated, but I didn’t have much energy to go out. I wanted to move out, but I didn’t have the energy to arrange it, so I just went to work and hid in my box room. I wondered if it was possible get bed sores from the amount of time that I spent in bed, but I didn’t really see any alternative. I did try to talk to my GP about how I was feeling, but I found it hard to express what was happening to me and he didn’t seem to believe me anyway.

It was a good friend who lived in another town who helped me. When she came home, we went out for coffee and she listened to my problems. She didn’t judge me, she had known me from school and she knew there was more to me than this. It was a relief to have someone to talk to. She suggested I come and live with her, as one of her housemates had moved out. It was a risk, but I was at such a low ebb, I decided to take her up on it. Making the arrangements was hard, but it was worth it. At first, when I moved into her house, I still wanted to stay in bed all the time, and she didn’t criticise me when I did that. Gradually, I started to feel better and to take an interest in life. I started wanting to go out again and to feel good about life. I’m not saying things were perfect, but they were much better. Looking back, I wish I had sought treatment for the Depression, but at the time I wasn’t really prepared to admit that was what was wrong with me.

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